Our biggest problem with managing consistency is the problem of finding a reliable, sympathetic chef. We’re only three people with a chef and without one we can’t manage for too long. It’s a constant struggle to retain staff which makes utter nonsense of the argument that Britain should leave the UK to help protect jobs. Without the Spanish, Poles, Brazilians and Hungarians (to date) we’d not have any kind of business at all.

So I haven’t written a blog entry for a while ‘cos we’ve been trying to find a chef – hopefully we’re going to be ok now for a bit. We’ll have to wait and see.

We always planned to celebrate Jewish holidays at Aron’s, at least those that have some association with feasting. But in truth organising events on the holiday itself hasn’t worked. No wonder perhaps as Jewish holidays often fall rather inconveniently in the middle of the Gregorian week. Purim on Wednesday 23rd March is a case in point. We’re considering moving the dinner to the Thursday or Friday and doing a kettle goulash BBQ in the rear garden instead.

Spring is on the way and we’ll be freshening up our menu in April. Chicken soup and Sólet will take a break until the autumn. If the sun shines and the temperature gets above about 18 degrees C then we’ll do some cold sour cherry soup in April and May.

Also in April we’re improving our Aron’s Deli Plate and the Fish plate and introducing a new vegetarian option – they’ll be available from about 12-12.30 every Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

We’re going to be producing a small number of smoked beef hotdog sausages for the Bristol Food Connections festival in April. Now we have 3-4 weeks to organise the logistics. There’ll only be 25 places available, each ticket gets you 3 dogs (the classic – mustard, onion, relish and ketchup, a kimchi dog and a chilli dog with optional cheese). We’ve done all the worrying about what’s in them so all you have to do is eat them!